Client interview — Global Head of Client Service

We’re excited to start a new series of client interviews this month.  In this and forthcoming short videos we’ll sit down with different end users of the Taskize platform and talk about the benefits it brings, looking specifically at time and cost savings, ease of use and client satisfaction.

First in the hot seat is Global Head of Client Service​, Diederik Geeraerts from Euroclear.  Watch the two-minute video interview above and read on for a longer, in-depth Q&A with Diederik.

Diederik, how long have you been with Euroclear and what’s your current role?

I’ve been with Euroclear Bank since 2005 in various client-facing roles and right now I am the head of the client service teams.

How long have you been using the Taskize platform?  Who do you communicate with and what do you use it for?

My teams have been using Taskize since day one. So, since the beginning of the journey of Taskize, we have been active users and we’ve seen the platform grow year over year.  My teams mainly use it to talk to clients, so our Euroclear clients.

What benefits have you seen of Taskize compared to email?

Euroclear has always positioned Taskize as being its preferred and premium communication channel.  Where we see that the inefficiencies, which emails bring, we really do compensate with Taskize.  It’s really a modern-day platform.  It has new technology, and we really see that the dispatching of workload to our employees goes a lot smoother, a lot more seamless with the Taskize platform.  And it is really this modern type of technology which is much more efficient than email.

What advice they would you give an Operations Director that is new to Taskize?

If someone in my role would come to ask me, ‘why would I advise you to use Taskize or to bring Taskize into your department or into your division?’  I would really say just ask your users on how they communicate in their personal and private lives.  And the question or the answer that I very often get is that nobody sends emails anymore.  Email type of communication is not being used anymore in personal lives.  Taskize accommodates for that very nicely within the corporate environment where the younger generations amongst all of us find this type of technology very intuitive, easy to use, and just prefer to use it above email.

How have you used the Taskize platform to reduce query resolution time down compared to email?

What we have seen is that a Taskize Bubble is treated much quicker than an email. And not only because of the preferred and premium communication channel that we have taken with it within Euroclear.  But, we do see that this type of technology facilitates communication much better.  We see that the majority of Taskize Bubbles are being treated within 10 minutes. If you try to compare this with email, of course, that’s a game changer. The difference is enormous.

What differences in client satisfaction have you seen with the platform?

Our clients love to use Taskize.  Where we see that the level of proximity, which is created via two users at the client side and internally with the Euroclear, collaborate on a Taskize Bubble, it creates proximity, it creates intimacy, and above all, it gets their queries solved much quicker than via email.  Global levels of satisfaction on Taskize are much higher than on email. We really do see that the end-user experience on Taskize is much more of a positive journey than it is on email.

When we took the journey of saying, okay, Taskize is our preferred and premium communication channel, of course, we took a step back to say, ‘how do we want to measure this?’  And we set a process in place where we asked clients after every type of question they raised with Euroclear to say, ‘what is your current level of satisfaction?’  ‘How has your journey been communicating with Euroclear client services?’  What we have seen is that Taskize communication channel has received much more positive feedback than on email.  Which is not surprising because let’s be honest, nobody sends emails in their personal life anymore.

Tell us about how your team uses the Taskize platform’s Smart Directory…

When I speak to my teams about Taskize and I ask them, ‘Look, what do you really like when you use the platform?’  Very often, they come back to say, ‘ we really appreciate the Smart Directory.’  Why?  ‘Because when my colleague is ill or absent or out to lunch, we know very comfortably that the workload will be dispatched to someone who is available to take it.  Giving the level of comfort that our clients are treated at any single point in the time during the day.’

And how about your own personal use of the platform’s MI Reporting?

What I truly appreciate about the Taskize platform is that you can run management information (MI) statistics off the platform, where it gives a very nice holistic overview of what is the workload coming in on a day-to-day basis.  When it is coming in, and even more importantly, how it is being treated, by whom and with what level of speed, what type of questions and queries are being raised, and so on.

Tell us about more qualitative aspects of the Taskize platform, and the end user experience?

The user experience, which I see happening on Taskize, is what we call internally ‘business casual’.  It means that the conversation is in a business context, but in a very casual type of interaction.  Where it is a seamless communication flow from the client to our client services team, to ensure that mutual understanding of the type of query they’re trying to solve together.

Where do you see the future of the Taskize platform, and the future of client service and client communications?

The future of client communications can go quite far.  I would even dare to say that for some of our clients, the future is already here, where we see that some clients have decided to drop email as a communication channel with Euroclear.  They have put all their queries that they raised to client services on Taskize.  Why?  Because it brought this proximity, it brought  KYC. And most importantly, it brought this bilateral intimacy between the end user at the client side and the end user within Euroclear.

Finally, interoperability of the Taskize platform and integrations with other systems?  Tell me about the strategic intent around Taskize for the future of your business.

The ultimate strategic intent of client services within Euroclear Bank is to deliver the best service we possibly can.  To ensure that ultimately, we have happy clients, at the end of the day. 

Where I see Taskize fitting into this picture, is that it’s a type of technology which is future proof, as it allows us to ensure interoperability between our legacy systems, but also to ensure connectivity within other systems that might come our way in the future.  And there, I am thinking of various types of technology, ranging from artificial intelligence to virtual assistants and anything that can help our clients along the way